Zaamin Highlands Retreat

You are met at Tashkent International Airport and transferred to your hotel. After check-in your guide takes you around the capital, starting at the Courage Monument, which marks the earthquake of 1966, and continuing to the Khast-Imam Complex in the Old City, where one of the oldest Qurans in the world is kept. You walk through Chorsu Bazaar under its turquoise dome, ride the decorated Tashkent Metro into the modern centre and finish at Amir Timur Square. Overnight in Tashkent.

You transfer to the railway station in the morning for the Afrosiyob high-speed train to Dashtobod, a little over an hour. Your driver meets you there for the drive up into Zaamin National Park, eighty kilometres and around an hour and three quarters of climbing road. You stop at an observation deck above the Zaamin Reservoir, where a small bazaar sells local snacks, and at the seven-hundred-year-old Bobo-Yongok hazel tree. On arrival you walk to the Zaamin waterfall, then check in to your hotel. Dinner and overnight in the park.

A full day in the park. After a slow breakfast you take the cable car up to Zaamin Suffa, a ride of about ten minutes that lifts you over the juniper forest onto the plateau. From the upper terminal you transfer to the Zaamin cable-stayed bridge and walk out across it, with a zipline and rope jumping available for anyone who wants them. You spend the rest of the day on foot among the archa junipers and mineral springs, with lunch at the hotel. The evening is free for the stars, which are exceptional at this altitude.

After breakfast you check out and begin the descent, which is a sightseeing drive in itself. You stop at an observation deck for the Suffa Plateau and the construction site of the Suffa international radio astronomy observatory, then at the thousand-year-old juniper and the Sherbuloq spring, and finally at the viewpoint above the Zaamin Reservoir. You reach Dashtobod station in the late afternoon for the Afrosiyob train back to Tashkent and are transferred onwards to Tashkent International Airport for your departure.